Memories of R’ Avrohom Drizin (Maiyor) from the time he learned in Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim inLubavitch, from a t’shura that was printed for the bar mitzva of his great-grandson, Yehuda Leib Drizin. * Presented for 15 Elul, when Tomchei T’mimim was founded.
EARLY YEARS
R’ Avrohom Drizin was born on 10 Cheshvan 5661/1900 in the town of Maiyor in White Russia (now Miyory in Belarus). His parents were Dovber and Yehudis. His grandparents, both paternal and maternal, were Chabad Chassidim.
His siblings, Yehuda Leib, Chaim Yitzchok, and Chaya Sara were murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis, may their names be erased, along with their families.
R’ Avrohom told about his childhood and learning in Tomchei T’mimim in Lubavitch (in a special interview):
I grew up in a town that was entirely Chabad, called Maiyor. There wasn’t even one shul of the Misnagdim in our town. It was very small, seventy Jewish families and one goy.
Although we were Chabad Chassidim, Lubavitch and the teachings of Chassidus were far removed from our world. Lubavitch was far, both geographically and in spirit. My father, though a Chassid and a talmid chochom, was a simple man when it came to Chassidus and he never traveled to Lubavitch.
It was at this time that the Haskala and Zionist movements spread all over Russia and greatly affected the townspeople. In my childhood I had three teachers: one taught me Gemara, the daughter of the shochet taught me Tanach, Ivris, Dikduk and writing, and the third teacher was a gentile who taught me Russian and mathematics.
When I was twelve I went to learn in Droya, a town near Maiyor. I learned by a melamed who taught Gemara in groups. R’ Zalman Droyer and R’ Bentzion Shemtov learned together with me there.
I would return home only at the end of the z’man (semester). During this period we learned eighty daf Gemara. The melamed demanded proficiency in everything we learned. Indeed, if a pin was stuck through the pages, we were able to say what was written at that point on all the pages the pin went through.
I finished learning in Droya at fourteen and it was time to travel to yeshiva. The question was which yeshiva to go to. The rav of Maiyor was a Misnaged. I don’t know how this happened, that a Misnaged was the rav of a Chassidic town. He davened Nusach Ari and kept Chabad practices but remained a Misnaged.
The rav was a close friend of our family and looked out for the boys who learned Torah. He recommended to my father that I go to learn in one of the big Litvishe yeshivos, in Slobodka or Kovna, where there were famous roshei yeshiva like R’ Boruch Ber Leibowitz and others.
It was hard for me and my parents to decide. We were small town folk who had no connection with the “big world,” and we did not know what the yeshivos were like and which was preferable.
My older brother was a yerei Shamayim although he did not go to yeshiva. He finished Russian gymnasium (high school) and was in business. He was unusually gifted, an ilui (genius). He was also knowledgeable in “worldly matters” and it was he who decided that I should go to Lubavitch.
My brother told us that in the Litvishe yeshivos there were many talmidim who were maskilim and heretics. The situation was especially bad in the small yeshivos which existed in many towns. There was no supervision in these yeshivos.
The best yeshiva, said my brother, is in Lubavitch. It’s a yeshiva that is organized and has supervision and “it’s for you,” he said. And so it was decided that I would go to Lubavitch.
My brother accompanied me to the train station in a nearby town. (At the train station I saw, for the first time in my life, lit lanterns on tall poles. My brother told me they were lit by electricity.)
IN LUBAVITCH
I went to Lubavitch with a letter of recommendation from the rav in Droya. The journey took an entire night. I arrived in Rudnia in the morning and went to Lubavitch from there. There were dozens of other boys who came with me. The entrance requirements were tough and most of the boys were not accepted. I was one of the few who were accepted.
A widow and two children arrived with me. One was thirteen and the other twelve. The older one was bright and he was accepted right away. The younger boy, who was of average ability, was not accepted. When he was told the news, he began to cry and he continued crying for several days. One day, the Rebbe Rashab passed by and the boy went over to him and said, “I am an orphan and I want to be a kosher Jew, have pity on me, Rebbe!”
Because of this impassioned plea which was said with a broken heart, the Rebbe told his son, the menahel and later to be the Rebbe Rayatz, to accept the boy into the yeshiva.
The end of the story was that the older, brighter brother left Lubavitch shortly thereafter while the younger, average brother remained. He eventually became one of the outstanding young Chassidim.
(By the way, the ones in charge of accepting new talmidim to Lubavitch were told not to accept talmidim who did not stand out with “extra cleverness” even if they were talmidei chachomim. In Lubavitch they said that a fool cannot be a Chassid.)
I AM STAYING IN LUBAVITCH!
After being accepted, I went to see the yeshiva. The yeshiva was divided into three divisions: the zal for older bachurim, the shiurim for younger bachurim, and the chadarim for boys my age.
I entered the zal and saw that all the bachurim had beards (until that point, I had not seen bachurim with full beards before their wedding) and wore shmattes. Although I did not come from a wealthy home, I had decent suits while these bachurim were dressed so pitifully. This shook me up and made a terrible impression on me.
I decided to go home. I did not want to stay in this place. But the fact that I had been one of the few to have passed the rigorous entrance exam stopped me from leaving immediately. I figured that I couldn’t leave until I stayed for at least a few days. Then I would go home. What can I tell you, in those days I knew nothing about the inner essence of Lubavitch.
(A close friend of mine by the name of Shmuel, who came with me to Lubavitch, could not adjust to the lack of gashmius in Lubavitch and wanted to leave right away. But since it did not look good for him to leave immediately, he stayed for a short while. I remember that he wrote a letter to his father, “I hope to soon leave this kur ha’barzel (iron cauldron for smelting metal) …” After a short stay, he indeed left Lubavitch.)
The days passed and it was Shabbos. On Shabbos no shiurim were said. There was seder only in the afternoon. At six in the evening I walked into the zal and saw an awesome sight which I had never seen before. Dozens of bachurim, at this late hour, were still davening. I saw that they were immersed in the davening. These were the famous ovdim and there were many of them. I remember Hillel Pocheper, a tall and nice looking fellow. His eyes were closed and he sang with great d’veikus. Both the tune and the singer captivated me. I will never forget that niggun.
At that moment I decided: I am staying in Lubavitch!
As I said, I was accepted into the chadarim, to the shiur of R’ Yechiel Komisar. He would say very deep shiurim that captivated me.
There was no dormitory for boys my age. Those who had money sent by their parents would manage somehow, but those who had no money had to eat teg, each day at someone else’s house. My parents sent me six rubles every month, a large sum. With that money I rented a room along with some other boys, in the home of an older widow by the name of Faiga Risha. There was an older bachur who slept with us who supervised us.
This went on until World War I, when the entire Maiyor area was cut off from Russia and annexed by Poland. An iron curtain divided between me and my family. Of course, the money I used to get from them stopped coming and I had to leave my rented room. I slept on a bench in the shul and ate teg by balabatim in Lubavitch.
I AM PROMOTED
TO THE SHIURIM
Later on, I was promoted to the shiurim, to the shiur of R’ Shmuel Ber Borisover. He was a gaon and his shiurim were fantastic and deep. I remember that one time the Rayatz came into our shiur. We were very frightened. R’ Shmuel was immersed in saying the shiur and did not notice Rayatz standing in the room. Even after we motioned to him he wasn’t rattled. Instead, he became like a gushing spring with pilpul and bekius. We never heard him reveal so much of his scholarship as he did in that shiur.
I had been in Lubavitch for three years and only then did the hanhala allow me to go home to Maiyor (the border with Poland had opened and I was able to visit). Until then they did not allow me to go home in fear that I would not return. The truth is that I myself did not want to go home. After three years, when I had become a fiery Chassid, I finally went home for the first time. I remember my meeting with the rav the Misnaged. He asked me to tell him about Lubavitch and about the Rebbe.
The rav had simple and earthly sensibilities. For example, the rav supported himself by selling the milk of a cow that the townspeople bought him. When I told him of the Rebbe’s greatness, he asked me, “So the Rebbe has two cows?” When I saw that the rav had cockeyed ideas about everything having to do with the Rebbe, I explained the Rebbe’s great holiness to him. But he wasn’t satisfied until I told him that what he said was like a person going to the capital city of Petersburg and saying that the czar has two cows.
After I returned to Lubavitch and after finishing with the shiurim, I switched to the branch of Tomchei T’mimim in Szedrin which was a yeshiva for young people. Over there, we began learning on our own. I learned by the mashpia R’ Shaul Ber Zislin who was a big maskil in the study of Chassidus and had a superior ability to explain things.
Much has been written and printed in the letters and sichos of the Rebbe Rashab and Rebbe Rayatz about the special quality of Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim. The Chassid, R’ Dovid Tzvi Chein, known by his acronym Radatz, called the period before the founding of Tomchei T’mimim “before Mattan Torah.”
I will tell you one way in which the yeshiva in Lubavitch was different than other yeshivos. It was unique in discipline and order. In Tomchei T’mimim, everything was wondrously precise and orderly. The mashgichim and maggidei shiur were serious people who were very particular, about their time too. They were never late or lackadaisical about their work. We talmidim also had to be very particular about keeping to the learning schedule.
When a talmid was late by one minute, he could be punished for that. The mashgichim knew every single bachur and knew his material and spiritual state. Hard tests were given according to a schedule. Each talmid was under constant surveillance by the mashgichim.
Because of this tough learning regimen, not many of the bachurim who came from all over Russia were accepted. The hanhala selected only those with very good heads, for to be devoted to two types of learning, Nigleh and Chassidus, which is what Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim innovated, and at such a standard as demanded in Lubavitch, was not for everyone.
Thanks to the overbearing supervision, speed and precision became ingrained in us. This approach was maintained at all levels. Even in the chadarim where the young boys learned, there were set and precise s’darim and strict supervision. An older bachur, who was like a counselor, received instructions from the hanhala to read the letters that the boys wrote home and the letters that the boys received.
WAR
During the extended period I was not at home, the rav of Maiyor urged my father to travel to Lubavitch to see how I was doing and what the yeshiva was like. Although he was busy with work and despite the big expense involved, my father came to visit me in Lubavitch. He was favorably impressed by the orderliness and discipline. Being a talmid chochom, he was also impressed by the high level of learning.
World War I began on Tisha B’Av 5674/1914. Many Russian Jews looked forward to the arrival of the Germans. They thought the Germans were their good friends, for Yiddish is similar to German. Many thought the Germans would bring freedom and relief.
But the Rebbe Rashab hated the Germans. He said about Kaiser Wilhelm II – Vilhelm: vil helem (wants concealment). The Rebbe predicted: the Germans will conquer Russia, swallow it, and choke it.
Once the war began, a new and difficult era began in the life of Lubavitch, a period in which Lubavitch was revealed in all its power – concluded R’ Avrohom.
THE BEET MIRACLE
The following story provides a small example of what the material circumstances of the bachurim were like in yeshiva:
After I stopped receiving money from my parents, my material circumstances deteriorated until I had nothing to wear. My last pair of pants was torn. Pesach was approaching and how could I wear these pants on Yom Tov? Having no choice, I bought needle and thread and decided to become a “tailor” and fix my pants. Since I had nothing else to change into, I went to the house where I ate that day and asked them to give me a room for a few hours so I could sew and fix my pants.
This poor family in Lubavitch let me use a storage room where there was a pot with borscht which was being prepared for Pesach. In those days, beets/borscht was a main food item that the poor ate on Pesach.
The storage room was dark and I did not notice that the pot of borscht was on the bench I was sitting on. After I fixed my pants, I got up, happy to have my pants fixed for Pesach. But oy, as I got up, the pot fell and red beet juice flooded the house, which was already clean for Yom Tov.
The owners of the house were stunned. They were now left without food for Pesach in addition to the fact that the previously clean house was now a mess. As for me, I wanted the earth to swallow me up. Poor people who had done me a favor, had given me food to eat from the little they had, had been repaid with my overturning their pot of beets. I felt terrible.
Then a “miracle” occurred which made me and them forget the “beet disaster.” This family had an only son who had been drafted into the Russian army at the beginning of World War I. He had been sent to the front and it was many months since they had heard from him. All their inquiries failed to provide them with any news of him. They were sure he would not return alive. And then, just as the beet juice spilled all over the house, he appeared! The sounds of joy echoed from one end of Lubavitch to the other and of course, the beet catastrophe was forgotten by them and by me. They were sure he had returned thanks to their hosting me.